DOWNLOAD 2020's BEST NEW FILM TO YOUR IMPLANT! SEX IN THE CITY 10: It's the age of "teledildonics" — realistic virtual sex that lets us be intimate with long-distance partners via the Internet (meaning Carrie doesn't have to be in the same room with Big). A variety of libido-centric innovations have given humanity new kinds of kink and altered the ways we have sex.

Drugmakers have yet to find an effective treatment for low sexual desire in women, but computer programmers are making up the difference. "We've done things a certain way for 100,000 years, and now social networking is opening a tunnel into our once private homes and making a big dent in our rituals," says British futurist Ian Pearson, who believes artificial intelligence and next-generation robotics could offer amazingly realistic sexual relations between man and machine. That could mean restoring sexual health to people unable to have sex via traditional methods; it could also challenge our definitions of monogamy. Says Pearson: "If people can have great sex without someone else present — or with an image of, say, Claudia Schiffer — they might not want to develop long-term relation ­ ships, or even go to work. It's dangerous."

Others see another twist on the birds and the bees: "By 2020, breakthroughs in stem cell technology will allow same-sex couples to have their own children," says Eric Klien of the Lifeboat Foundation, a Nevada-based think tank. "The same goes for people who are 70."

Topic Alerts

You can get weekly email alerts on the topics below. Just click “Follow.”